I never saw the first-part Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning (2023), but only the second-part Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning (2025), so I’m at a disadvantage. Doesn’t matter. I was aware of the film’s very, very high stakes and enjoyed Ethan Hunt’s nerve-racking efforts—fleshed out by age-defying Tom Cruise—to defeat the “anti-God” A.I. . . As usual, the movie is enthralling-looking. It has little humor and nothing cheesy, and would have been rated G in the Seventies. The cast is agreeable, and I think Hunt and Hayley Atwell‘s Grace love each other. Neither is terribly glamorous here. Doesn’t matter. (Cruise is 62. This is, incidentally, the last MI film.)
Author: EarlD Page 2 of 315
Starring Charles Laughton, 1938’s The Beachcomber is not as smoothly directed and edited as Laughton’s Mutiny on the Bounty, but it’s an engaging effort all the same, based on a Somerset Maugham story. Laughton’s role is that of a ne’er-do-well island dweller whom a schoolteaching missionary wants to reform. He seems unreformable, though; is he? There are curiosities and contingencies. For her part, the schoolteacher, Martha, is a stern Christian who is herself converting to a degree she would not have expected. The film ends the way it does because it is a comedy—serious but exaggerated.
At first I thought Laughton’s acting was rather mannered, but soon found it subtle and droll; persuasive. Elsa Lanchester is wonderfully true as Martha. The film is the sole directorial work of producer Erich Pommer. Recommendable.
For a book published in 1977, Lewis Patten’s The Trial at Apache Junction might seem like a pretty tired Western. But how tired, really, is such a novel when its story makes sense and its action passages are fairly imaginative? It concerns a sheriff who knows the scoundrel he’s supposed to execute did not get a proper trial, and it’s fun despite a few stale details. Throw in a perfidious deputy and a career-ending murder, and you just might end up with a notable entertainment.
Does the book have anything to say? Nope. It’s neither philosophical nor religious nor political. It’s the usual trinket. Have fun.
Sunset, 3/9/08, near Apache Junction, Arizona (Photo credit: gwilmore)
To me, musical though it is, God Help the Girl (2014) features too many songs, most of which I didn’t care for. This was often because of the hazy lyrics. The lovely “Come Monday Night” is an exception. All the songs were written by Stuart Murdoch, who also scripted and directed the film. The story is slight but not uninteresting, certainly containing a spiritual dimension. (Why is GHTG so unprofound, though?)
The cast is good. I can’t really judge Emily Browning‘s singing, but her acting is palatable. So is that of Olly Alexander, but Hannah Murray needs to make a bigger splash. So: there are reasons to see Murdoch’s film.
With the Great Depression persisting, it was hard to find a job in 1939, especially for a bachelorette. Polly Parrish (Ginger Rogers) is working only a seasonal job in the ’39 Bachelor Mother but, ah, it benefits her when the lass turns into a . . . Bachelor Mother, perforce taking care of an abandoned baby. Out of pity, the company boss (David Niven) hires her for permanent work. Everybody mistakes Polly for the baby’s mother—and then there is regrettable ignorance about the identity of the father.
There is not much to say about this flick (directed by Garson Kanin). It’s a romantic comedy which isn’t very funny, but at least has an original screenplay by Norman Krasna and Felix Jackson. It’s a family film that will appeal especially to women and non-fastidious children. David Niven—who was an “approachable” and dapper but masculine actor—is winning. So is the understated Rogers. The whole crew keeps Bachelor Mother humming along, pleasantly.